INTERNATIONAL Women’s Day (IWD) was commemorated worldwide on March 8. Women had long been suffering discrimination and oppression in all cultures and civilisations but the first group protest against these conditions arose in the West at the beginning of the 20th century. In non-Western countries, following the lead of the West, women’s rights movements grew up everywhere and by the end of the century, their presence and demands could not be ignored or suppressed. Even in Saudi Arabia, though women’s rights activism was not overt, it kept fermenting and influencing the male-dominated and patriarchal society and to-day, Saudi women have more rights than 20 years ago.

Women in the West and moreso in non-Western countries, even today, suffer social, political and economic discrimination and oppression. They often could not own property, and even in families, property was generally willed to the males. They received less pay than men for the same work and in some societies, slave-like, they did all the hard, back-breaking work in addition to having to bear and bring up children. For instance, in the less developed parts of Asia, Africa and Central and South America, women do most of the agricultural work, have to fetch wood and water for miles to their homes, have to do the household chores and are often ritualistically beaten.

In all societies, males are regarded as socially more prominent than women and this result in all kinds of discrimination such as in economic and political advancement. For example, males could network with greater effectiveness while female net-working for their benefit is generally weak. In the important social institution of marriage, they have to wait on men to propose or in common-law relationships, they could never ask for the legalisation of such relationships without invoking serious crises.

For centuries, women had no political rights or political representation. Even when Democracy began to replace Absolutism towards the end of the 19th century, women were not part of the equation. Democracy was confined to men. It was only in the 20th century that women won the right to vote and it was many years after, they were elected to Parliaments.

The advent of World War II caused a shortage of manpower throughout the West and women had to assume jobs and fill roles which were unthinkable for them just a decade before. After the War, women’s liberation continued and all states in the West and in non-Western countries, especially the colonies of former European empires, adopted the equality of women and men as unchallenged state policy.

Despite the general acceptance by almost all states of the policy of gender equality, discrimination has still continued and rural women, in particular, are more oppressed than their urban sisters. For example, less than 20 per cent of landholders worldwide are women and the global pay gap between men and women stand at 23 per cent and in the rural areas it is as high as 40 percent. Women have never adequately shared in power and political office worldwide. There is therefore need for strong women’s activism for equality and liberation.

In Guyana, on International Women’s Day, the media tended to concentrate on the achievements of women and their success in economic ventures. The total impression conveyed was that there was gender equality and that Guyanese women were on a continuous upswing.

The reality is far more sombre. There is still room for gender equality and parity. Women in common-law relationships are still beaten up, starved and have to struggle to bring up children. There are gruesome killings of women by husbands and partners. Far more women are unemployed than men. In the rural areas, girls have less of a chance of education than boys while education can be used as a vehicle for upward mobility; and women in work situations and elsewhere are victims of sexual harassment and exploitation.

Women’s activism, in addition to building women’s morale, must have an agenda. That agenda must set out those areas which must be addressed to bring about gender equality. For example, the economic and educational advancement of rural women or the methods of extirpating sexual harassment and exploitation in the workplace. Such an agenda must always concentrate on specifics.

Religion and the priests and teachers must play a more important part in achieving gender equality. In several religious traditions women either are assigned a secondary role or are even depicted as wicked or unclean. In such cases as with Eve, Delilah, Jezebel, Salome and others, women are portrayed as being evil. Priests and teachers must interpret religion to remove this dangerous prejudice and stigma.

Another prejudice that has to be explained is the thinking of God as masculine. Many early women’s rights advocates spoke of God as She and Her and not as He and Him, since belief in God as masculine was the basis or justification of patriarchalism which led to so much oppression and suffering of women over the ages.

In this vein, Hinduism, though insisting that God (Parabrahm) is genderless, does advocate that when God is manifested in the world, it is in both male and female form. At the moment, Navratri is being celebrated and these nine nights are devoted to worshipping God in female manifestation. It may be useful for women’s rights advocates to explore the ways ancient civilisations and philosophers dealt with the question of a masculine God.